Evolutionary history of inquiline social parasitism in Plagiolepis ants.
Mol Phylogenet Evol
; 155: 107016, 2021 02.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-33242582
ABSTRACT
Social parasitism, i.e. the parasitic dependence of a social species on another free-living social species, is one of the most intriguing phenomena in social insects. It has evolved to various levels, the most extreme form being inquiline social parasites which have lost the worker caste, and produce only male and female sexual offspring that are reared by the host worker force. The inquiline syndrome has been reported in 4 species within the ant genus Plagiolepis, in Europe. Whether inquiline social parasitism evolved once or multiple times within the genus remains however unknown. To address this question, we generated data for 5 inquiline social parasites - 3 species previously described and 2 unidentified species - and their free-living hosts from Europe, and we inferred their phylogenetic relationships. We tested Emery's rule, which predicts that inquiline social parasites and their hosts are close relatives. Our results show that inquiline parasitism evolved independently at least 5 times in the genus. Furthermore, we found that all inquilines were associated with one of the descendants of their most related free-living species, suggesting sympatric speciation is the main process leading to the emergence of the parasitic species, consistent with the stricter version of Emery's rule.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Ants
/
Parasites
/
Biological Evolution
/
Host-Parasite Interactions
Type of study:
Prognostic_studies
Limits:
Animals
Language:
En
Journal:
Mol Phylogenet Evol
Journal subject:
BIOLOGIA
/
BIOLOGIA MOLECULAR
Year:
2021
Type:
Article